


Cat and mouse

by Zoya113



Category: Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, general hospital tws, some gore, takes places after inevitable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27893536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Emma hasn’t let her guard down for three whole weeks since she was taken to the Clivesdale hospital, and on the day she finally thinks she can relax she is met by an alien wearing her lover’s skin and a horrible game of cat and mouse.
Relationships: Paul Matthews/ Emma Perkins
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Cat and mouse

**Author's Note:**

> TWs for some mentions of gore and sharp tools but no needles

“Miss Perkins? Are you ready?” The same nurse had been treating Emma for the past three weeks.

Emma didn’t know whether she was the only nurse allowed in this part of the hospital bay or whether it was because they knew Emma couldn’t cope with strangers right now, but she was grateful anyways.

She nodded, pulling the hospital bed blankets back and shuffling to the edge of her bed, the nurse grabbing her shoulder to help her stand. 

“I don’t really wanna do many laps today,” she informed her. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, she swore she had heard a sound from the store room across the hall and had stayed up all night ready to run. “Maybe once or twice around the hall.” Just to scope the place out for herself, so she could confirm whether or not there were any of the infected hiding inside. 

“We aren’t going walking today, Emma,” the nurse gave her a warm, surprised smile. “The colonel wants to see you, today.” She held forth a blue backpack and she slipped it onto her back without much thought. 

“Hm?” She tilted her head, staying rooted to the floor. “But usually she comes to me,” she shook her head. “Why are we changing it?” She eased herself back up onto her bed, not only to give her leg a rest already but to make her point that she was not switching things up. The colonel could come here. 

“No, no, your leg is fine to walk to the conference room now, look, you’ll really surprise her!” The nurse attempted to encourage her. “And I think she has a surprise for you too!” 

Emma didn’t like surprises much anymore. It was a bad word, but she acquiesced, only because the nurse made her feel safe, and she was too tired to muster up energy to be on edge any more after last nights ‘sleep.’

The nurse walked her through the hall to the lobby of her hospital wing. They said she was the only one on this floor but she didn’t believe it.

It wasn’t a huge floor, only an operating theatre, the store room and the conference room. There was the lobby too, but she didn’t usually come through here when walking since permission was needed to open the frosted glass sliding doors. It was as private as private could get, but she knew there was also one other bedroom on her floor.

It was entirely a secret whether or not someone else was in there. She had tried to worm that answer out of Colonel Schaeffer, and each time Schaeffer would tell her Paul didn’t make it. That wasn’t the question she had asked, but it was the answer. 

She mumbled to herself at the thought as the nurse scanned her hospital card at the sliding doors. They clicked and rolled open slowly, closing safely behind Emma after they stepped through. 

“You’re very safe here, Emma,” the nurse purred. 

PEIP had been heavily patrolling the hospital bay for her whole stay. For stray hospital staff they kept telling her, because the apotheosis had to stay out of the public eye, but she knew what they were really on the look out for. 

They knew something she didn’t. 

Not just about what was really happening on that island, but the disease and where it came from and what it had intended to do, whether or not it could be cured or controlled, but all they ever told her was to ‘not worry.’ 

Her whole fucking town had gone to shit in less than twenty four hours. Telling her to ‘not worry’ was a weird way to tell her she was going to be scarred and traumatised and never the same for the rest of her life. 

But what scared her most about PEIP was something she had heard uttered in the halls between two PEIP captains on patrol.

‘Two in the head, one in the heart.’

Something their General had told them.

It hadn’t happened to her, obviously. 

Yet. 

Maybe they were testing her for antibodies, Hidgens had mentioned the meteor was full of spores. It meant it was airborne and that meant it could’ve infected her through her wound, but she had made it.

Maybe that was the only reason they were keeping her around, see if they could take them from her to vaccinate the rest of the population or stop it from happening next time. Perhaps they just wanted to examine her, and then they’d dispose of her.

She gulped at the thought, her throat dry and her heart pounding but not quite racing. It was too tired to race.

Why would they kill her? It wasn’t like they were going to shoot her up against the wall execution style the second she walked through those doors. Surely. She still turned to the nurse for confirmation.

“Is your leg okay, Emma?” The nurse asked, and she realised she was digging her heels in. 

“What’d she want to talk about?” Emma asked, pulling at her collar slightly to take in some more air.

“Your discharge, sweetheart,” the nurse offered a sympathetic smile, rubbing her back with her thumb since her hand was planted on her back.

“Oh, um.” It just felt weird, to be discharged after three weeks when her femoral shaft had been shattered. It was too soon. Maybe this wasn’t a conference. 

“You’re stable enough to be moved to a hospital in Colorado, although I think the colonel would like to tell you that herself,” she gave a warm and comforting laugh, and Emma almost cooled off, long enough to stop struggling as the nurse guided her through the door to meet with the colonel again. 

She had seen her perhaps three or four times in her stay, and Emma tended to take a bit of comfort in her than the other officers.

She tended to cut the bullshit at least. Instead of giving out the usual ‘don’t worry’ answer whenever they passed her speeding heart rate monitor, she would go ‘that’s impressive,’ and they would both laugh.

Although admittedly Emma was a little too zoned out on whatever she was announcing today, because there was a gun sitting in the pocket of her utility vest, and the nurse had left.

Was she going to come back? Was this a private meeting? Or did they have no intention of her returning to her room? 

No, she was being silly. She was being discharged and there was nothing in her hospital room she needed anyways. It was all in her backpack.

God. But why would it be private? The nurse already knew what was happening, and that was only confirmed when the colonel handed over the deed to her own private plot of land in Colorado. 

Emma took a step back when Schaeffer produced the files for her, there was something rhythmic and orderly about the way she moved. Perfectly in time, her gaze just brushing past Emma’s before she could check the colour of her eyes. Even the way she turned back to face straight ahead instead of looking at her. It was all to a rhythm.

No. That was just the way the military worked, they moved to their own rhythm, it wasn’t like the Hive because they were here to protect her. She tried to calm herself. Nearly there, no reason to panic anymore. 

“Green, fertile, hell of a place to grow some cannabis,” Schaeffer snickered.

“Thanks,” was all she could manage, clutching the folder tightly to her chest. There was even something rhythmic about the way she spoke, almost. 

The military didn’t explain that. 

But speaking wasn’t singing, she insisted to herself. 

Emma leant forward anyways, trying to catch the colour of the colonel’s eyes today. But she was facing straight ahead, and Emma didn’t want to risk getting closer. Schaeffer looked like the kind of woman who could kill with her fists, infected or not.

No, it was fine. It was okay. She was just freaking out. She took in a deep breath, placing her papers - her real papers - into her backpack. Why would Schaeffer even try to kill her? 

The Hive wouldn’t give her a free way out, they had her all alone in a room right now and nothing was happening. They could’ve taken her by now if they so pleased. But they hadn’t.

Maybe she was safe.

Her nerves had been shot for the past three weeks, twenty four seven. Her heart had been aching from racing, from flinching every forty minutes (because that was the travel time from the Hatchetfield shore to the Clivesdale hospital), from waking up in the middle of the night at a nightmare or a small noise and not being able to get back to bed.

Maybe she wanted to be happy again, she would have been craving it if her mind hadn’t been locked in survival mode at least. 

She glanced back up, still nodding along. Schaeffer’s hands were securely behind her back though, no where near her gun she noticed. She clearly had no plans on executing her.

Unless she was going to infect her.

No, no she had already run that path in her head, she couldn’t be infected. Even if each of her steps towards the door were perfectly timed and spaced. That was a military thing, she reminded herself. Not a hive thing. The colonel wasn’t infected. The colonel was safe.

“You’ll be escorted to Colorado by a Mister Ben Bridges,” Schaeffer had informed her at the last minute with quite a proud smile.

It was almost too sweet to belong to that of the Hive. Like she was actually really pleased for the both of them.

“Oh uh, I don’t know any Ben Bridges,” Emma barely had the energy to shake her head. She wasn’t getting in a car with a stranger, even if he was a PEIP worker. 

‘Two in the head, one in the heart’ echoed inside her skull, the words were well worn into the bone, engraining themselves onto the back of her eyes. Any time she blinked she was sharply reminded someone could be behind her with a well trained gun when she opened her eyes again.

“Well according to our records, you two were very good friends,” she stated like perhaps it was quite obvious.

Emma didn’t know Ben Bridges. They were trying to trick her, she tensed up as she left, testing her leg against the ground to see if she was ready to run. Just in case. Somehow she knew she wasn’t going to though, she was exhausted with fighting, she was sort of considering the easiest way to submit to the hive, and all of these thoughts had raced through her head at a hundred words a second until the door opened, and in walked Paul.

...

Shit, so that’s what silenced sounded like in her brain. She had almost forgotten, and it was so nice for it to be right here in her skull.

If Paul was here things were okay.

“Paul!” Her arms already out to hold him as he ran towards her to accomodate for her leg. 

He was really here, and he had been here all along, “you made it!” She exclaimed, sniffing. Oh my god, things really were gonna be okay, her mind was settling itself down, erasing those irrational thoughts - of course PEIP weren’t going to execute her, of course Paul hadn’t died. He had blown up the meteor! She didn’t even have anything to worry about it this whole time because he had destroyed the hive! 

“We made it!” 

He nuzzled into her shoulder, chuckling and smiling and nodding and holding her so, so tightly, leaving no room for the fears that had washed and weathered her down from the inside out and leaving only peace.

She held him back, squeezing his arms as she whimpered, happy tears brewing in her eyes. He was so warm, he was so, so, warm to her. 

“Emma,” 

or maybe, maybe not so warm. 

“I’m sorry, you lost.”

Cold.

Cold. Cold betrayal. The hug wasn’t so comforting now, she couldn’t get out, and he didn’t take the signal to back off when she moved her hands to his shoulder, her head pressed to his chest where she couldn’t hear his heart beating.

“Paul?”

“Emma. I’m sorry, you lost your way.” 

She had known it from the first note, but she didn’t know how to fight back as he spun her around the room in an excited tango, refusing to let her leave his grasp for long, pushing her around the room like nothing more than a toy, but always there to grab her shoulder after each disorientating, dizzying spin.

He flashed in and out of her vision as he twirled her, she couldn’t keep her eyes on him and suddenly she was face to face with the nurse, the one that had rubbed her back and cooed kind words to her only moments ago, she just yelped louder, it was all she had left to do.

Schaeffer was supposed to be here, she had only been here moments ago! But instead only more of them entered - Bill, Ted, Hidgens, oh my god Hidgens. 

It was when Nora entered that her brain seemed to flick on though, and she dumped her backpack to the ground, wrestling it off her shoulders and hauling ass out of there and back down the corridor. 

She felt a pull at her stitches and didn’t even stumble. “Shit!” But it hadn’t even hurt, she could only feel a blind white panic as she barrelled down that hall, almost smashing into the storeroom door and quickly stumbling back, eyes set on it for the split second she had no control over her steps, preparing for someone to lunge out and grab her, but she regained her balance and raced for the frosted glass doors, yanking at it, pounding a fist up against the thick glass. 

She coughed out a dry breath, her hands shaking and her leg not ready to stand on its own, she couldn’t put all her weight into pulling at this door. “Open up!” 

Schaeffer surely would’ve only passed through this door seconds ago! She pounded on it harder, but she could still hear singing down the hall, and she didn’t have time to hope someone would let her through, and legged it back up the other path, trying not to let stress tears blur her vision.

She pried open the door at the end of the hall only to stumble right back into the crowd with a scream, dodging between the circling crowd, ducking under a hand that had snaked out to grab her only for someone to take her shoulder from behind, spinning her around and throwing her off balance before someone else pulled at her arm. 

‘Playing with food’ the thought was so loud in her head it almost obscured her vision, and she missed a step, falling right back into the swirling sea of the Infected, it was like being dumped by a wave, and there was just as little oxygen in her lungs. 

All the doors were blocked. Maybe she’d have to jump out a window, there’d be a fire escape or something, she knew there was an elevator, maybe there was- nails dug into her skin, dragging her right off her feet and back towards the centre of the room. 

Paul was right behind her, forcing her back on her aching, shaking leg as he stepped towards her, chest puffed out and shoulders wide, pride on his twisted face as he belted out his number, almost the same one Hidgens had sung before he -  
They were crowding in on her now, cornering her up against the scattered medical equipment, the seven of them. And she collapsed with a final scream of horror. Her leg pressing against the floor but lacking any strength to raise her back to her feet until they hauled her up with a cheery applause for their successful catch.

They were all clapping and humming triumphantly as Paul and Ted opened the door to the corridor to take her away. To feast on her in the dark, to savour the infection perhaps, to- there was a gunshot from the foot of the hall.

It scarcely missed Paul, screaming right over his head. His grip faulted on her arm and the seven of them stopped singing in sync.

Another shot at Ted, and he let her go. Paul gave her a push to keep her on her feet as Ted lunged at the sole soldier. The nurse and Hidgens pushed past her to chase him down the hallway. 

The nurse took a bullet to the shoulder and blue sprayed out, but she was not even fazed as she sunk her teeth into the man’s neck, tearing a chunk out as he spluttered for air. 

Behind her Bill and Nora let out excited gasps and hurried to get their own share. 

They looked like they were going to devour him. He hadn’t even had time to scream. She had never seen them do that before.

Scratch that, she didn’t want to see, she had been pushed to the back of the crowd and she was going to take it. She hurried back into the conference room before they could notice she had left, slamming the door shut behind her and taking the second door out that should’ve lead towards the elevator, she could lock herself in, get to the bottom floor. Or perhaps get up through the roof and hide above the elevator box, if she could make it she could- 

The elevator gave a cheery ding, and the hydraulics pressurised with a hiss of air, the rollers locking in to open the doors. 

Emma staggered back against the wall in shock for a moment, veering for the fire-well instead, heaving the door open and jumping down the flight of stairs, smacking into the concrete. 

Above her, the fire alarm went off, concealing the sound of her whimper, her shoulder had caught most of the fall where her leg couldn’t. 

She pulled herself around the corner just as a second song paraded out of the elevator, almost using the fire alarm as a beat.

A set of nurses, a doctor and even a patient, dragging an IV stand along with him, his open innards trailing out from under his blue hospital gown by his bare feet, leaving blue smears across the tiles. 

She clapped a hand to her mouth to stop herself screaming, trying to summon up what she had learnt in Biology during dissections - she flinched as she remembered Hidgens, and her brain hit her with a vivid image of his own insides squirming their way out of his stomach. 

It was a surgical incision, they hadn’t torn him open at least. They got him on the operating table. It meant the lower floors were all infected too.

She hauled herself up with the railing to make her way down, but something else caught her ear.

An echo from all the way down at the bottom of the stairwell like that of a church singer, operatic and deep, some sort of wallowing bellow that bounced off the concrete all the way up to here, twisting in with the fire alarm. 

She could still go out on the next floor down perhaps, get out through the fire escape that way. 

She skipped the steps, jumping them down three at a time to the next platform when the door on the storey just below her swung open, crashing against the brick and jittering as a surgeon strode through, white scrubs not so white anymore. 

A deep, alarming belt reverberated off the cement. She pointed her still bloody scalpel forward like a commanding soldier, and more of them followed through the door. 

Emma took back off up the stairs, a flare of pain and resistance in her muscles from pushing herself up the steep steps while the Infected’s below her moved up seamlessly and spritely without any drag, matching up the stairs towards her.

She yanked the heavy door back open as they advanced to the staircase below her, a stair a second as she jammed her fingers at the elevator buttons. 

The doors heaved a breath of air, the hydraulics seemingly thinking about it, buzzing and then freezing for what felt like hours. 

She shoved the fire-well door shut, hoping it could buy her time but she caught a glimpse of them halfway up and could hear their pounding footsteps loudly from within. She couldn’t wait for the slow elevator.

Emma pelted back down through the corridor, coming to a complete halt at the red stain splattered up against the white hospital walls and seeping into the tile grout. 

The emergency lights had flickered on, sputtering red light onto his still, crooked form.

The body was laying face down on the ground, arm bent at an angle it shouldn’t have bent at, head barely hanging on.

But he must’ve come through the frosted doors- he must have a key. In his pockets. 

She squatted down besides the body despite her leg’s resistance, holding her breath and preparing to leap back up in case there were blue eyes behind that visor. 

She grabbed his shoulder to push him off the leg he was crumpled on, her face screwing up at the still warm and sticky blood that was seeping through his uniform onto her hands. 

Her palms were sweaty and clammy and her body was ready to jump up and run at the slightest sign he wasn’t dead although his spine was jutting out of the stubby chunk that was his neck. 

She couldn’t grab his card, and the singing was still advancing, from the hallway and the conference room now. At the end of the hall, the fire escape door had swung open. The infected would swarm to the noise. 

“Fuck!” She hissed, shutting down her nerves for long enough to dip her hand into his deep pockets, retrieving a ring of keys and staggering back to her feet, falling back against the wall to flip through them for his hospital card. Sweat was sticking her thin shirt to her back. 

She turned to the right, and then to the left, freezing.

There was somebody on the other side of the frosted glass.

Just sort of standing there, too close to the door to make out the owner of the shape. They were tall and broad shouldered and entirely still. 

She froze like they wouldn’t see her if she didn’t move. Even if she wanted to wipe his hot blood off her hand. 

They weren’t singing or dancing. There was only a slight sway to their form to confirm to her they weren’t dead all together. Not yet.

Maybe they were the patient from the other room. Maybe it was another PEIP soldier.

She baited her breath, risking a step forward quickly. “Colonel Schaeffer?”

A beat, and then it jerked at the noise, lunging its whole body at the glass and cracking it, one hand shaking violently as it tried to pry the door open with more strength than the bone would allow.

She pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle a squeal, leaving a smear of blood across her feverish skin, she shot a look at the store room to see if she could make it. No. She could open it and something could be right behind that door. 

She booked it right back up the hall, a taste of iron in her mouth. The glass shattering just as she rounded the corner, a note like a wail of terror singing out, and all around the floor similar voices sung out in unison until the floor seemed to be shaking, tightening in on her position as she heard storming towards the corridor, bouncing off the walls in all directions.

She rasped for breath, shouldering open the operating theatre door and slamming it behind her, fumbling with the lock and swearing as her legs carried her away before her hands were done. Her eyes darted around the room but her heart was racing too hard for them to catch on anything. 

She shook her head, pushing past the operating table with only the brief thought of hiding underneath. She tore open the medical cupboard, diving in with a clutter of sharp equipment, pulling her legs inside and grazing them across the low roof. 

She reached an arm out to shut it as the door flew open again, pulling the door shut in the same beat the hospital door flew open.

She tucked her arm tight across her stomach to make room for her legs, eyes wide in the darkness, trying to calculate whether or not there was enough time for them to have seen her hand sticking out. 

Her neck was stiff, worried even the quietest noise would alert them. If they didn’t already know.

She exhaled a shaky breath that was hot on the skin of her knees, barely able to think before something heavy was thrown to the floor with a crash and a clatter of equipment skidding out across the tiled floor, something shattering. Something was hurled up against her the cupboard and she jolted, hand planting itself to the bottom of the shelf. Any minute now the door would be ripped off its hinges and she would be dragged out into the sterile hospital light.

They would rip her throat out. Or perhaps her stomach. They could put her down on the operating table and cut her open. They could take her- something smashed up against the wall and there was a frustrated howl. 

“Emma!” It was Paul. “Dear!”

The operating curtains were jerked back against their rod, the plastic rings screeching against the metal before the whole thing came cluttering to the ground.

She pressed herself into the corner, stifling a wince as the pain in her leg seemed to finally make itself known. 

“Emma! Come on out!” 

She shuffled her hand to her leg, clutching it tightly and trying not to squirm. She must’ve pulled the stitches. She bit down on her tongue to stifle a cry.

His footsteps paced around the room, occasionally falling into silence for reasons she didn’t know. He would let out an excited little hum of a laugh from time to time - always followed by something smashing and breaking. 

“My sweet.”

Something ran across the wall, a slight metallic sound that followed his footsteps around the room like he was dragging something sharp across the wall. 

He came to a halt right outside the cupboard. 

She wrenched her eyes shut, tucking herself further back into the coffin, scraping the skin of her leg against the roof and leaving it raw and stinging.

“Hahah,” he giggled, his laughter spilling into an anticipatory hum. “Emma!”

She braced herself at his laugh.

Something small hit the ground right outside her door, and then seconds later everything rained down on top of the cabinet. He had pulled the shelf off its hinges, a heavy box thumping down onto the cupboard, shaking it enough for the door to creak open ever so slightly, just a sliver. 

A crack of white light lit up her face, and she could see his shoes, pointed the other way. She raised a shaky hand, trying to grab it and pull it shut before it could swing on its hinges, but he turned around again and she yanked it back in. 

“Oh, this isn’t any fun,” he announced out loud, rather melodramatically before making for the door. 

He was out of her limited sight when he shut the operating door with a slam. 

She let out a sigh, tipping her head back against the wall, resting her arms over her stomach. Everything ached and her head was ringing and her throat was dry and her leg was giving out, and she couldn’t even breath. 

She held her breath for a moment longer, because it hurt too much to breathe out after her lungs had clawed her throat for air and that was easier than breathing slowly. 

Her mind was white noise and static, she clamped a hand to her throat to rub it, willing at least one part of her body to work but nothing was responding. She could barely hear the ever present music and the still ringing albeit muffled fire alarm over the blood rushing to her ears.

She counted back from one hundred in her head, allowing herself no more and no less time to recover. She still had to escape before the whole hospital was crawling with those things.

She held a hand to the cupboard door, taking in her first proper breath, shuffling up so she could topple out of the cupboard, leaning to push it open when-

“Hahah.” 

She was pulled from her stupor at the sound of a laugh right outside the cupboard, just to the right of the open door’s panel where she couldn’t see.

Unmistakably Paul’s.

She listened in horror as he paced towards the centre of the room. “Hmm,” he sung like he knew she could hear, wherever she was. “Well. You’ve got to be on this floor somewhere.”

And then the door opened and shut again. 

She made the decision consciously to stay in the cupboard this time, knees still pressing against the roof and elbows smacking the walls each time she shifted even slightly. 

It would be okay. They didn’t know she was in here, they wouldn’t find her, how would they? How could they? 

She licked her chapped lips but her mouth was too dry to make much of a change. She even tried to slow her breathing again, but she couldn’t take in enough air with her knees forced to her chest. 

Being hurried alive might’ve been more comfortable.

The singing still continued from time to time, no longer in one big, belting chorus but rather in chilling hums as any of them drifted past the door to the operating theatre. The fire alarm was now more present that them.

And then a gun shot.

A strained note filled the air again, and then a muffled round of bullets, a human scream, a threatening belt and a storm of boots on the floor, skidding on the tiles, a roar and a rain of bullets, something thudding as it hit the floor.

And silence. All in about the span of ten seconds. 

She stared in shock, right ahead into the darkness trying to picture what it could’ve been, but a minute later it happened again.

Another round of bullets, and another fun being fired at the same time. There were at least two soldiers. And then a shout, the sound of the door sliding properly open and boots skidding into the hall, guns being fired from the hall way and the corridor, someone running past the theatre door.

There was enough gunfire to give her hope that perhaps PEIP had returned with proper reinforcements. 

From inside the cupboard most of it was blurry, but the singing was always piercing, even more shocking than the gunfire.

But eventually it ended, rather suddenly, mid scream, and there was silence in the hallway.

She didn’t trust that though, Paul had just played the same trick. She wouldn’t risk falling for it.

She settled to cramp up and stiffen her bones as she counted down from one thousand this time, stifling on numbers and restarting when she lost track, eventually deciding to let the numbers melt into the static of her mind, it would take her heart longer to calm down than it would to count backwards, and so she shut her eyes and tried to rest.

It was a futile attempt since she had barely slept at all in the past three weeks, and it certainly wasn’t going to happen now but her body was shutting down regardless, her heart throbbing in time with the fire alarm, thumping against the inside of her ribs. She could feel it throughout her whole body.

Just for a rest. Just for a moment. Even with her eyes closed she could still see. Violent images of her being dragged across the hospital, bloodied scalpels in hand, shattered glass and broken bodies.

No, she couldn’t stop yet. 

She finally elbowed opened the door, falling onto the tiles and laying on the cool, nursing her popped stitches with one hand. 

No body grabbed her off the floor, so that was a good sign right off the bat. There wasn’t any singing to insist she had been sighted, only the fire alarm, and the rest of the floor was silent.

The operating theatre looked like a bomb had gone off, the table was on its side and the curtains were torn and draped across the floor over shattered glass and sharp, blue-bloodied surgery saws.

Quivering, she picked up a scalpel that was laying right by the door to the cupboard, it had been digging into her good thigh. 

She glanced up, mostly at the theatre door, noticing a thin white trail across the walls where Paul must’ve been dragging it. 

She took it in one hand, eyes fixated dizzily on it. It was like he had left it here for her.

She pulled herself up, slumping against the wall and facing the door. 

It was quiet.

Trick or not, she knew one team hadn’t survived. She wasn’t ready to find out which.

She aimed the scalpel at the door, her last, pathetic line of defence, but she was more exhausted of being scared than of running. 

And then she waited.

**Author's Note:**

> Ay I wrote most of this listening to 100 gecs and that’s why not even editing could save it


End file.
